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Cetezulu
In Biggles and the Black Raider, Cetezulu was the name of the leader of a large gang which roamed a large area of East Africa spreading a wave of terror, raiding villages and farmsteads, killing the inhabitants and stealing the cattle. According to Air Commodore Raymond, he had killed more than twenty whites, an unknown number of African villagers, and hundreds of Indian traders and labourers--a group which he seemed to hate. Cetezulu styled himself "the Black Elephant, Lord of Africa" and had ambitions of becoming the emperor of Africa. For this reason, and because there was plentiful loot to share around, he managed to attract a large number of followers--more than thirty towards the end. Cetezulu was particularly successful in applying hit and run tactics, moving quickly and always hitting targets far apart. In some cases he had been documented as having moved more than 50 miles a day for a week. In so doing, he managed to evade the thinly spread local police and troops. Hunting him down seemed to be a job for aircraft and it is therefore no surprise that Biggles and his Air Police was called in. Even so, the value of aircraft was limited, at least at the beginning. As Ginger was to discover for Biggles, the secret of Cetezulu's mobility was the existence of a secret road cut into a bamboo swamp which allowed him to travel rapidly but under cover. Using this road, he was immune from aerial surveillance. Cetezulu had, however, one weakness in his scheme as Biggles pointed out. He had to sell his stolen cattle to someone. Thus he had to emerge from cover at some point such as at the extreme north of his operating area near Ethiopia where there was always a ready market for cattle. In support of this surmise, Biggles noted that after being sighted in the north, there would always be a pause before the pattern of raids began again. This must have been the period of time when he was regrouping and disposing of his loot. Following this line of thinking, Biggles tracked Cetezulu and finally located him in a area of elephant grass north of his road in the bamboo swamp. This was in the Mapika district near the Bunyoro Reserve in Uganda. This was where Cetezulu had previously encountered Major Harvey by chance and had killed him. Cetezulu must have thought he was safe from interference inside the sixteen feet high elephant grass but Biggles stampeded his cattle herds by buzzing them with his Mosquito aircraft. In the ensuing chaos, Cetezulu's gang desparately ran out of the elephant grass into the cordon of Askaris outside. Cetezulu himself was pursued and killed inside the elephant grass by Mishu, Major Harvey's gun-bearer who had vowed to avenge his employer's death and had joined Biggles' in his search as the best way of achieving this objective. Cetezulu's background was largely a mystery. According to Air Commodore Raymond, there were plenty of opnions about his origin. Some accounts described him as a former mine worker, born in Kimberley, who had to flee after killing a foreman. Other accounts placed his birthplace as far away as Sudan or Kenya. Mishu was one of the few people who had seen him and lived to tell the tale. He described him as an enormous man with a slight cast in one eye and dressed in full Zulu regalia: in ostrich feathers and a leopard skin kaross--something Ginger was able to confirm when he encountered him at close quarters in the bamboo swamp. Mishu believed Cetezulu was definitely not a Zulu. He was likely to be a man who, years ago, used to cause a lot of trouble as a poacher in the Semliki and Guru Reserves and who had eventually been tracked and hounded out of the district by Major Harvey. Mishu therefore thought for Cetezulu to kill Harvey might have been a matter of revenge. Category:People Category:Biggles characters Category:Air Police era characters